IYA2009 spirit lives on — during Germany's craziest highway closure

20 July 2010

It was the highlight event of the European Capital of Culture celebrations at the Ruhr in Germany: 60 km of one of the country's busiest highways, the A 40, were completely closed to motorized traffic one Sunday (July 18) - and then opened for everyone. In particular 20,000 tables were set up where cultural activities of all kinds could be performed for the pedestrian and cyclist visitors, of which some 3 million eventually made it to the unusual spectacle. This was an opportunity not to be missed by the regional IYA node which still meets on a regular basis: We managed to turn 10 of the tables into a model of the solar system spanning most of the A 40 segment reserved for the "Stillleben" (still life) event. It was not really to scale but used identical designs to express some continuity amongst the bewildering variety of sights. And the Sun was marked by a bright yellow balloon measuring 3.7 meters: This was a left-over from another Capital of Culture event when hundreds of those balloons marked former mining shafts. Not only did our tables mark the (rough) relative positions of the planets, though: At many of them telescopes were set up to show the Sun in white light and H-Alpha, and numerous visitors, perhaps 5000 over the day at all stations, got their first direct celestial views. Whether such a highway party - a logistical challenge of epic proportions - will ever be repeated is far from clear, but there are no fears anymore among the astronomical participants of the A 40 Stillleben now to confront crowds of any size with telescopes and information.